Выборка по метке: "Planet of the Apes"

   Told as a flashback to the early 21st century with a wraparound sequence narrated by the orangutan Lawgiver (John Huston) in "North America - 2670 A.D.", this sequel follows the ape leader, Caesar (Roddy McDowall), years after a global nuclear war has destroyed civilization. In this post-nuclear society, Caesar tries to cultivate peace between the apes and the surviving humans. A gorilla general named Aldo (Claude Akins), however, opposes this and plots Caesar's downfall. Caesar is married to Lisa (Natalie Trundy), the female ape of the previous film, and they have a son, named Cornelius (Bobby Porter) in honor of Caesar's father.

   Caesar regrets never having known his parents until his human assistant MacDonald (Austin Stoker) tells him about film archives of his parents, where he can also learn about the future. The archives are located in the Forbidden City, now a radioactive ruin. After obtaining a geiger counter and weapons from the armory, Caesar travels with MacDonald and orangutan Virgil (Paul Williams) to the Forbidden City and sneaks in to find the archives. However, there are radiation-scarred humans still living there under the command of Governor Kolp (Severn Darden). Caesar and his party view the recordings of Cornelius and Zira and learn about the future of the world, but barely have time to study the tapes before they have to escape being captured. Caesar assembles a meeting to report his discoveries at the Forbidden City. Aldo objects when some humans show up, and he leads the gorillas away.

   A team of scouts sent by Governor Kolp return and tell him about the Ape City. Kolp considers this covert trip by Caesar an act of espionage. His assistant, Mendez (Paul Stevens), believes they did nothing wrong and should be left alone, but Governor Kolp stubbornly declares war on Ape City, mustering the humans to destroy the ape society.

   Aldo is furious that Caesar wants to co-exist peacefully with humans, and plots a coup in order to become the Ape leader himself. Cornelius overhears this while trying to catch his escaped pet squirrel in a nearby tree. Aldo spots him and hacks the tree branch down, critically injuring Cornelius. After a gorilla scouting pair is attacked by the approaching humans (though the gorillas struck the first blow in this case by killing a human scout beforehand), Aldo orders all humans to be corralled and leads the gorillas to loot the weapons' armory. Cornelius eventually dies from his wounds, leaving Caesar devastated, but not without leaving him with a warning about Aldo's coup.
It is at that moment that Kolp's ragtag force launches their attack against Ape City. The initial mutant attack succeeds, forcing Caesar to order the defenders to fall back. When Kolp finds Caesar lying among dozens of apes, he threatens to kill him, but the fallen apes, who were feigning death or hiding on Caesar's orders, launch a counter-attack that captures most of the mutants. Kolp and his remaining forces are killed by Aldo's troops while attempting to retreat.

   After the battle, Aldo wants to kill the penned humans, but Caesar shields them. Aldo declares that Caesar should be killed if he shields the humans. However, Virgil reveals Aldo's responsibility for Cornelius' death and the breaking of the ape community's most sacred law ("Ape shall never kill ape"). An infuriated Caesar pursues Aldo up a large tree, resulting in Aldo falling to his death. Caesar then attempts to free the humans, but they refuse to leave the pen unless humans are treated as equals. Caesar then realizes the apes are just as despicable as the former slave-owners, and the apes and humans then decide to coexist with one another and begin a new society.
The Lawgiver finishes his wraparound narration (he says it's been over 600 years since the death of Caesar). It's revealed he's talking to a group of young humans and apes; apes and humans have continued to coexist in peace. When asked by a human child "Who knows about the future?", the Lawgiver replies "Perhaps only the dead." A closeup of a statue of Caesar shows a single tear falling from one eye.

   The opening titles set the film in "North America – 1991." Armando (Ricardo Montalban) explains that in 1983 (ten years after the end of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, which was set two years ahead of its theatrical release date), a disease killed the world's cats and dogs, leaving humans with no pets. To replace them, humans began keeping apes as household pets. Realizing the apes' capacity to learn and adapt, humans train them to perform household tasks. By 1991, American culture is based on ape slave labor (just as Cornelius described would happen in the previous film). It is also suggested that the North America of the 1990s is at least partly a police state, as apes and humans are being watched at all times.

   Armando and Caesar (Roddy McDowall), a young chimpanzee horseback rider in Armando's circus, distribute flyers around a large city to advertise the circus' arrival. Armando warns the chimpanzee to be careful; should anyone learn his identity as the son of Cornelius and Zira, it would mean their deaths. They see apes performing various menial tasks, and are shocked at the harsh discipline on disobedient apes. Seeing an ape being beaten and drugged, Caesar shouts, "Lousy human bastards!" Quickly, Armando takes responsibility for the exclamation, explaining to the policemen that it was he who shouted, not his chimpanzee. The surrounding crowd becomes agitated, and Caesar flees.

   Hiding in a stairway, Armando tells Caesar he will go to the authorities and bluff his way out of the situation. Meantime, Caesar has to hide among his own kind (in a cage of orangutans) and soon finds himself being trained for slavery through violent conditioning. He is then sold at auction to Governor Breck (Don Murray). Breck allows the ape to name himself by randomly pointing to a word in a book handed to him and the chimpanzee's finger rests upon the name "Caesar", feigning coincidence. Caesar is then put to work by Breck's chief aide, MacDonald (Hari Rhodes), who sympathizes with the apes to the thinly veiled disgust of his boss.

   Meanwhile, Armando is being interrogated by Inspector Kolp (Severn Darden), who suspects his "circus ape" is the child of the two talking apes from the future. Kolp's assistant puts Armando under a machine, "The Authenticator," that psychologically forces people to be truthful. After admitting he had heard the name Cornelius before, Armando realizes he cannot fight the machine. A guard comes in to force him to continue the interrogation, but Armando struggles and jumps through a window, falling to his death. Learning of the death of his foster father, the only human that cared for him, Caesar loses faith in human kindness and begins plotting a rebellion.

   Secretly, Caesar teaches combat to other apes and has them gather weapons. While doing an errand with Ceasar, MacDonald expresses concern for the rising problems and wished he could communicate with Caesar. Caesar exposes himself as the lost circus ape and tells MacDonald of his plans to depose Breck. MacDonald, while understanding of Caesar's intent, has his doubts about the effectiveness of revolution, as well as Caesar being dismissive of all humans. Meanwhile, Breck learns from Kolp that the vessel which supposedly delivered Caesar is from a region with no native chimpanzees. Suspecting Caesar is the ape the police are hunting, Breck's men arrest Caesar and electrically torture him until he speaks. Hearing him speak, Breck orders Caesar's immediate death. Caesar survives his execution because MacDonald lowers the machine's electrical output well below lethal levels. Once Breck leaves, Caesar kills his torturer and escapes.

   Caesar begins his revolution, with the first objective to capture Ape Management. The apes are victorious after killing most of the riot police. After bursting into Breck's command post and killing most of the personnel, Caesar has Breck marched out to be executed. MacDonald, whose ancestors been slaves, begs Caesar not to succumb to brutality and show mercy to one's former masters. Caesar ignores him, and in a rage declares:

Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch, and conspire, and plot, and plan for the inevitable day of Man's downfall. The day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under radioactive rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland out of which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we shall build our own cities, in which there will be no place for humans except to serve our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty! And that day is upon you NOW!

   As the apes raise their rifles to beat Breck to death, Lisa (Natalie Trundy), Caesar's love interest, voices her objection, "NO!" She is the first ape to speak other than Caesar. Caesar reconsiders and orders the apes to lower their weapons, saying:

But now... now we will put away our hatred. Now we will put down our weapons. We have passed through the night of the fires, and those who were our masters are now our servants. And we, who are not human, can afford to be humane. Destiny is the will of God, and if it is Man’s destiny to be dominated, it is God’s will that he be dominated with compassion, and understanding. So, cast out your vengeance. Tonight, we have seen the birth of the Planet of the Apes!

   The preceding film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, ends with the apes' future Earth being destroyed by a nuclear weapon.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes begins by establishing that three apes—Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), Zira (Kim Hunter), and Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo)—escaped the Earth's destruction by salvaging and repairing Taylor's spaceship and piloting it through the shock wave of Earth's destruction, sending the ship through a time warp. The salvage, repair and launch all happen off-camera during the final act of the previous film.

   The apes arrive on Earth in 1973, splashing down off the Pacific coast of the United States. They are transported to a secluded ward of the Los Angeles Zoo, under the observation of scientists Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy) and Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman). The apes decide not to let the humans know that they can speak. They also agree not to let them know that Earth will be destroyed because of the Ape War. Later, the apes' power of speech is revealed when Zira becomes impatient during an experiment. Soon after, Milo is killed by a zoo gorilla who becomes agitated during an argument amongst the three chimpanzees. Lewis tries to communicate with the apes that he is peaceful and he wishes to treat them as equals, and Cornelius and Zira form a friendship with him and Dr. Branton.

   A Presidential Commission is formed to investigate the return of Taylor's spaceship and determine how atypically intelligent apes came to be aboard it. The apes are brought before the Commission, where they publicly reveal their ability to speak. The council asks them about Taylor, but Cornelius and Zira tell them that they know nothing about him. They reveal that they came from the future and escaped Earth when war broke out. They are welcomed as guests of the government. Cornelius and Zira secretly tell Stephanie and Lewis that they did know about Taylor, explain how humans are treated in the ape-dominated future, and about the Earth's destruction. Stephanie and Lewis are shocked, but they are sympathetic. They tell Cornelius and Zira to keep this information secret until they can gauge the potential reaction of their hosts.

   The apes become celebrities, and are lavished with gifts and media attention. They come to the attention of the President's Science Advisor Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden), who discovers Zira is pregnant. Fearing for the future of the human race, he offers her champagne (which she has developed a taste for) to loosen her inhibitions and questions her further. Her candid responses enable him to convince the Commission that Cornelius and Zira must be subjected to more rigorous questioning.

   Hasslein insists that he simply wants to know how apes became dominant over men. Cornelius reveals that the human race will cause its own downfall and become dominated by simians, and that simian aggression against humans will lead to Earth's destruction by a weapon made by humans. Zira explains that the gorillas started the war, and the orangutans supported the gorillas, but the chimpanzees had nothing to do with it. Hasslein suspects that the apes are not speaking the whole truth.

   During the original hearing, Zira had accidentally revealed that she dissected humans in the course of her work. Hasslein orders Lewis to administer a truth serum to her while Cornelius is confined elsewhere. Lewis assures Zira that the serum will have the same effect as champagne. As a result of the serum, Hasslein learns details about Zira's examination and experimentation on humans.

   Zira joins Cornelius in confinement while Hasslein takes his findings to the President (William Windom). Cornelius labels Hasslein and the others savages for their treatment of Zira. Zira reminds Cornelius that she did the same thing to humans and Taylor called them savages. Zira is relieved to have revealed the truth because she was tired of lying. Cornelius fears that the truth will get them killed. An orderly refers to their unborn child as a "little monkey"; Cornelius, having previously expressed his disgust at that term, loses his temper and knocks a food tray out of the orderly's hands. The orderly falls to the floor; Cornelius believes that the man is only unconscious, but he is actually dead. Hasslein uses the tragedy in support of his claim that the apes are dangerous to humanity, and he calls for their execution. The President reluctantly orders that Zira's pregnancy be terminated and that both apes be sterilized, but will not endorse punishment for the orderly's death until due process has been served. Branton and Dixon help the apes to escape, and find them shelter in a circus run by Senor Armando (Ricardo Montalban), where an ape named Heloise has just given birth. Zira gives birth to a son, whom she names Milo, in honor of their deceased friend.

   Hasslein, knowing that Zira's labor was imminent, orders a search of all circuses and zoos. Armando insists that for their own safety the apes must not stay. Lewis gives Cornelius a pistol. Cornelius, formerly a pacifist, accepts the pistol knowing he may have to use it as a last resort. The apes take refuge on an abandoned ship in Los Angeles Harbor. Hasslein tracks them there, and finds Zira resting with an infant. Hasslein shoots Zira after she refuses to hand over the infant, and then fires several shots into the infant. Cornelius returns fire and kills Hasslein. Cornelius is shot by an unseen sniper and falls. Zira tosses the dead baby over the side and crawls to die with her husband, witnessed by a grieving Lewis and Stephanie.

   Armando reveals that Zira and Cornelius switched babies with the common ape Heloise before their escape. Armando watches as the infant Milo plaintively asks for his mother.

   Following the events of Planet of the Apes, time-displaced astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) and the mute Nova (Linda Harrison) are riding on horseback through the desert of the Forbidden Zone. Without warning, fire shoots up from the ground and deep chasms open. Confused by the strange phenomenon, Taylor investigates a cliff wall and disappears before Nova's eyes.

   Elsewhere in the Forbidden Zone, a second spaceship has crash landed after being sent to search for Taylor and his crew. Like Taylor's ship, it has traveled into Earth's distant future. However, surviving astronaut Brent (James Franciscus) believes he has traveled to another planet. He encounters Nova and notices she is wearing Taylor's dog tags. Hoping Taylor is still alive, he rides with her to Ape City, where he is shocked to discover the simian civilization. He observes the gorilla General Ursus (James Gregory) leading a rally calling for the apes to conquer the Forbidden Zone and use it as a potential food source, against the objections of the orangutan Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Brent is wounded by a gorilla soldier and taken by Nova to the home of the chimpanzees Cornelius (David Watson) and Zira (Kim Hunter), who treat his wound and tell him of their time with Taylor. The humans hide when Dr. Zaius arrives and announces that he will accompany Ursus on the invasion of the Forbidden Zone.

   Attempting to flee the city, Brent and Nova are captured by gorillas. Ursus orders they be used for target practice, but Zira helps them escape. They hide in a cave which Brent soon discovers is the ruins of the Queensboro Plaza station of the New York City Subway, making him realize that he has traveled through time to Earth's post-apocalyptic future. After following a humming sound deeper into the underground tunnels, Brent begins to hear voices telling him to kill Nova. Entering the remains of St. Patrick's Cathedral, he finds a population of telepathic humans who worship an ancient nuclear bomb.

Brent and Nova are captured and telepathically interrogated, and Brent reveals the apes are marching on the Forbidden Zone. The telepaths attempt to repel the apes by projecting illusions of fire and other horrors, as they had done to Taylor and Nova. Dr. Zaius sees through the illusions, however, and leads the ape army to the ruined city. With the apes closing in, the telepaths plan to detonate their "Divine Bomb" as a last resort. They hold a religious ceremony, at the height of which they remove their masks to reveal that they are in fact still-intelligent humans who are descended from survivors of the nuclear wars. The nuclear fallout has mutated them by removing layers of their skin, but greatly increased their psychic abilities.

   Brent is separated from Nova and taken to a cell, where he finds Taylor. The mutant Ongaro (Don Pedro Colley) uses his telepathic powers to force Brent and Taylor to fight each other to the death. Nova escapes her guard and runs to the cell, screaming her first word: "Taylor!" This breaks Ongaro's concentration, freeing Brent and Taylor from his control. They then overpower and kill him. Brent describes the bomb the mutants worship and Taylor recognizes it as a "doomsday bomb", capable of destroying the planet, marked with the Greek letters Alpha and Omega on its casing.

   The apes invade the subterranean city, killing Nova and making their way to the cathedral. They are confronted by Mendez (Paul Richards), who raises the bomb into activation position before being gunned down. Brent and Taylor attempt to stop Ursus from accidentally setting off the weapon, but Taylor is shot. Brent manages to kill Ursus before being shot dead by the gorillas. The mortally wounded Taylor pleads with Dr. Zaius for help, but Zaius refuses, saying that man is only capable of destruction. In his last moment, Taylor brings his hand down on the activation switch, triggering the bomb and destroying the Earth. The film ends with a voice-over saying, "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead".